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In addition to Sunday’s media column on the Clippers’ hiring of Bruce Bowen as a new TV analyst for Prime Ticket, we got into these topics with the former San Antonio Spurs guard:

Q: What was the ESPN experience like primarily as a studio analyst? What did you learn from that?
A: Wow, how much time do you have? I always understood why some (ex-player) had issues with studio work. Sometimes when it comes to TV, it’s about the sensationalizing of a situation at the moment. The headlines can move different. Instead of talking about a player, even thought he had just scored 40 points, the question would be: ‘What did think of him dancing after the game?’ Certain things can be blown up into stories instead of having us talk about the game in different ways. ESPN was great opporunity, but it was also a chance to see other people do their job in a professional manner that I never quite saw before — like a radio guy, by himself, talking for five hours. That takes talent. I got to see people in their element.
Of all the different things I worked on — ‘NBA Tonight,’ ‘SportsCenter,’ ‘Mike & Mike,’ I really enjoyed the time with Bob Ley on ‘Outside The Lines,’ which was very thought provoking and geared toward situations like, Is it proper to visit the White House after a championship? I know it’s been blown out of proportion now a days, but I was still a question they asked a year and a half ago, and my experiences were always fantastic, to visit a place that not many get the opportunity to see.

Colin Kaepernick, Muhammad Ali.
In the same breath? The same conversation? Heading toward the same legacy?
It’s something we keep hearing. It’s nothing we take lightly.
But how do these men connect on the accuracy meter?
“I think there’s a huge correlation,” said Jonathan Eig, whose new expansive book, “Ali: A Life” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 606 pages, $30), doesn’t officially come out until Tuesday but has already matriculated to some book store shelves – perhaps because of the timely nature.More at this link …

ALSO:= A June, 2016 piece from the New York Times about how Ali inspires authors and included this from Eig: “There’s a ton of new material and new information that no one has come across before. I found some of it in the archives of people who interviewed him over the years, who left their note and tapes, some in court records, and some in interviews. His wives had never really discussed what their lives were like with him. … I think I’ll blow people’s minds with some of the stuff I’ve discovered about Ali, in good ways and bad ways. I think people will be shocked by the book.”
= An excerpt of the book in Sports Illustrated
= A review in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune

== What does this even mean?
A Photoshop display of 10 people, including the Sparks’ Candace Parker, linking arms with people under the headline “A National Divided, Sports United.”
SI executive editor Stephen Cannella said in an SI.com video post that the point is to capture both the “news of the weekend” and the “enduring message of what we saw. … What we saw in various ways … is the way the sports world is coming together, and the sports world is acknowledging they’re not perfect.”
Why no Colin Kaepernick, who started this whole thing and now gets lost in almost what looks like an over-reactionary opportunistic moment for those who decided to react to the President Trump remarks rather than be involved in what sparked Kaepernick’s original protest?
“In some ways, even though his picture’s not there, Kaepernick is there. I think we all know that. Colin Kaepernick — for lack of a better word — is looming over everything that happened this past weekend and looms over many issues in society right now,” wrote Cannella. “What we were trying to capture with this cover was the way new voices emerged this weekend and the way this … protest movement has evolved even beyond Colin Kaepernick.”
Beyond, or sidetracked?

== From CougCenter.com of SB Nation under the headline: “The Monday After: Forget Nevada – it’s time for USC … The No. 5 Trojans are coming to town on Friday. Get jacked”
This is the weekend we’ve had circled on our calendars since the schedule came out months ago. We knew the USC Trojans would begin the season highly ranked. We knew WSU could win its first four games. Consequently, we knew that if both teams did what they were supposed to do in the first month, this would be a clash between a pair of ranked opponents in a Friday primetime matchup with the entire nation watching on the country’s premier sports network.
We knew that this could be huge. And now, it is. …
“You know when the last time was that it was still September and a ranked WSU team hosted another ranked squad? 1989! Before that? 1952!”|
Settle down, guys …

A six-game NFL Sunday? On four different channels?
What did we do to serve this punishment?
From the crack of dawn to well past last call for the season premiere of “Bob’s Burgers,” Week 4 of the NFL in L.A. is, from all estimations, unprecedented in excess.
“I’ll bet there has probably never been a Sunday in NFL history when the fans of one city had access to six games,” said Mike Mulvihill, Fox’s executive vice president of research and strategy.
Then factor in the games Thursday and Monday nights, and the eight total games involving 16 teams means we will be able to see half the entire NFL on display.
Mulvihill explained that there are four Sundays this season when a network that usually has a single Sunday game will get two games in L.A. because of how the Rams and Chargers sometimes get painted into scheduling corners.“It’s challenging over the course of the season, but it works out fairly,” Mulvihill said. “In the end, it’s good for both networks because they all count toward national ratings, and it’s good for the fans to have access to that many games.”
This rare Sunday begins with CBS keeping its scheduled doubleheader, but it’s not really an advantage since Fox doubles up with both L.A. teams playing in different windows.
Make that, triples up, because of another game in London that will go to everyone.
What also adds to the interrupted confluence is that the second Fox game (Chargers-Eagles) will kick over to L.A. sister station KCOP, because the NFL is contractual obligated to show every minute of each L.A. team’s game to the home market. They can’t chance an overtime Rams game spilling into the Chargers’ kickoff slot.
This is how it plays out:Continue reading “NFL Week 4 in L.A. TV market: A unprecedented half-dozen games on Sunday? What did we ever to do the NFL to deserve this?” »

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